I was introduced to Rivendell Bicycle Works and Grant Petersen's writings almost two years ago and was very intrigued. I bought my first adult bicycle, a Trek Multitrack, in 1995 and rode it for twelve years and then gave it to my dad and bought a 2007 Trek 7.2 FX. I was riding the FX when I discovered RBW and because I wanted to test some of Grant's ideas, I gave the 7.2 to my dad and got my old Multitrack back from him. I rode it for a bit and discovered it was too small so I started watching Craigslist for a replacement and about 3 months later I scored the same year and model Multitrack in a larger size. I've spent the last year or so upgrading different components on that bike and reading about frame geometry and comparing that to the ride characteristics of my bike. I quickly discovered that my bike had too much trail so I bought a new fork with 1cm more rake and dropped the trail from 74 to 66mm. This was a vast improvement. I also decided I wanted to try longer chainstays, a lower bottom bracket and even lower trail so I started searching for appropriate frames and finally found the Handsome Devil. Handsome Cycles was started in Minneapolis by a couple of guys who work in a bike shop where there is a great deal of reverence for Bridgestone bicycles. With Grant's blessing they recreated the XO-1 and then designed the Devil as a 700c version of the XO-1. The Devil has 73 degree seat and head tube angles, a 45mm rake fork (trail of 60), chainstays of 43.6 + cm, and 70mm of bottom bracket drop. The Devil's trail is right where Grant has stated he likes it, the bottom bracket is higher by Rivendell standards but lower than what I was riding and the chainstays came out to 44.5 cm with the forward facing dropouts. All of my bikes have had 73 degree seat tube angles so the more shallow angles are still an area to be explored for me. Otherwise, this bike is a solid middle-ground between what I was riding and a Hunqapillar. In fact, it has the same basic geometry as the Legolas and the 1994 Bridgestone RB-T. I've only ridden it a couple of miles but my initial impressions are very positive. I don't feel a huge difference from the additional chainstay length but the bike feels much more stable and smooth and surprisingly, the front end feels more stable with 60mm of trail than it did with 66mm of trail. The overall stability I attribute to the lower bottom bracket (an maybe the longer chainstays) and the more stable feeling front-end I'm guessing is a result of 60mm of trail being in the so-called "neutral steering" range. I know I never would have take my hands off the handlebars of my Trek but I was completely comfortable riding this bike with no hands. The plan now is to eventually make my way out to RBW headquarters so I can actually test ride a Hunqapillar. If the ride quality improvement from the Devil to the Hunqapillar is equal to the improvement from the Trek to the Devil, I'll set my sights on eventually getting the Hunq. Specs: 55cm Handsome Devil Deore 48/36/26 crankset 11-28 9-speed cassette Deore V-brakes Velocity Dyad rims Schwalbe 40mm Dureme tires [URL=http://smg.photobucket.com/user/corwin1968/media/IMG_1303_zps570fc2fa.jpg.html][IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v627/corwin1968/IMG_1303_zps570fc2fa.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
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